Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): Favourite Films Series

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): Favourite Films Series

 

Shakespeare once famously wrote in MacBeth “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Those critical of the fourth Mad Max movie might use that quote to describe it, and that’s fine. They are entitled to their opinion. I, however, am among those who maintain it is not just one of the best action movies of the 2010s, but one of the best films in general from the past decade. It has nothing to do with me being a fan of any of the first three movies beforehand, either. Prior to 2015, I knew next to nothing about Mad Max, and had no idea what to expect from the long gestating fourth installment, but then again, I don’t think anyone expected it to be as exceptional as it turned out to be.

Many months before the film premiered in May 2015, there were murmurs about how it was going to shock audiences and blow everyone away with incredible action sequences, and one internet personality in particular on a movie web series I always watched talked it up following an early screening he saw with unfinished visual effects. After the enticing trailer dropped I decided to educate myself on the original Mad Max trilogy and bought them on Blu-ray. They were all entertaining enough, but having not grown up watching them, they didn’t leave a particularly big impact on me. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior was my favourite, which feels the most thematically linked to Fury Road in retrospect. I noticed after watching Fury Road for the first time that out of all the people I saw it with I was the least irked by the lack of characterization for Max, because I already knew his back story from those movies. I think that’s the one area where Fury Road doesn’t really stand apart as well from the original trilogy, but for the most part, there is no crucial need to have seen the other three movies to better understand the fourth.

Mad Max: Fury Road was in the mind of writer/director George Miller for many years before it finally went into a lengthy, arduous production, and when it eventually came out, it was in an era of Hollywood defined by the reboot. Planet of the Apes, X-Men, and Godzilla had all been rebooted in years prior, and in 2015 we saw two other humungous franchises reboot: Jurassic Park and Star Wars. Unlike most of the reboots of the 2010s, Mad Max: Fury Road does not lean on nostalgia, or exist just to make money, or wobble as a hollow copy when held up against the original. Fury Road is a potent, high-octane vision of what essentially boils down to a nonstop chase across the desert, but it is so much more than that, and is the best version of that simple idea I have ever seen.

There is not much complexity when it comes to the story of Fury Road (often the part it gets criticized for the most) but there’s something noble in telling a simple story perfectly instead of making a story unnecessarily complex and telling it poorly. Where the film succeeds the most for me aside from all the action is in the world building and the production design. We do not get spoon fed any explanations about what is going on or why anything is the way it is. We get enough info to figure out this is a post-apocalyptic world and in this particular corner of it there is a war lord by the name of Immortan Joe who rules over some very unfortunate looking survivors clinging to life by controlling the water. Imperator Furiosa particularly hates Immortan for enslaving young women to be his wives and breed his children, and the intricacies of this sick, twisted culture play out almost entirely through visual representation. We don’t get direct explanations for why Immortan wears his outfit, complete with a breathing apparatus, or why precisely his sons are so disturbed, or how the side character named The Organic Mechanic thought to hook up war boys to living humans in order to keep them alive. We don’t need any explanations for any of it, we just need to see it to believe it, and it is all believable no matter how outlandish it gets because it all looks completely authentic and cohesive.

In the opening credits both Tom Hardy’s and Charlize Theron’s names appear on screen at the same time, and to me that was a very conscious decision, because both of them share the role of main character, even though we’ve never seen Furiosa before, and technically we’ve never seen this version of Max Rockatansky before, either, for this is the first time he was played by someone other than Mel Gibson. I think Tom Hardy did a perfectly good job and added in just enough little quirks to make his version of Max fit in this world but also be cool and badass in his own way. Furiosa is the better protagonist, to me, because she is not only unique in her appearance, but her motivations are as strong as her convictions, she’s a physical threat even with only one arm, and does not need Max’s help, but does benefit from working with him. Apparently Theron and Hardy didn’t get along on set, but I don’t think that comes through in the final film. Furiosa is one of the best modern action movie heroines, and it makes sense why she got her own prequel film. I also appreciate that she is not just a female version of Max; she is a character distinctly her own.  

This is not a movie full of incredible dialogue. I don’t mean there isn’t any good dialogue, though. Neither main character is very talkative. Much of the storytelling is through visuals and actions, but when characters do speak, the lines hit, and stick. When Rosie Huntington-Whitely’s character falls from the truck and Max emotionlessly says “She went under the wheels” as the reason not to go back to save her, then repeats the line even more gravely, it has more impact because people aren’t just constantly speaking and spouting clever lines and yelling everything. As unhinged as most of the characters in this world are, I really appreciate that when they open their mouths, what comes out is believable and impactful (and sometimes laced with Aussie slang that will go right over your heard the first few times if you aren’t listening carefully). “Out here everything hurts,” Furiosa tells Immortan’s wives. And then there are amusing lines like “Mediocre!” and of course “What a lovely day!”  

I can’t call Mad Max: Fury Road one of my favourite films and not talk about some of the action in it. Obviously the vehicle crashes, pursuits, and stunts are all the biggest highlights, but I particularly love how insane the movie gets so early on in terms of putting the characters in dangerous situations. Whether you know Max from the previous movies or not doesn’t matter, he is the first of our two heroes we meet and it’s clear before the opening title he is in trouble. He ends up being the blood bag for Nux, a war boy near the end of his half-life who wants to “die historic on the Fury Road!” Nux gets Max hooked up to the front of his car, so our hero is literally sticking out the very front of a high speed vehicle amid a war party that eventually drives head-on into a sandstorm of epic proportions. It’s such a creative way of putting the protagonist in a unique place of danger that is both entertaining and tension-building, and then, as the music swells and the other characters prepare to be lambasted by the storm, Max is still completely helpless! It’s awesome, and the action never lets up, but doesn’t get exhausting, either. It hits that sweet spot of a precise two hour runtime.

Another “favourite” aspect I have to address is the soundtrack. Tom Holkenberg A.K.A Junkie XL worked on the score for 18 months, which is quite a long time, but all that time allowed him to get every track just right, and the first time I saw the movie, the music gave me goosebumps. It is still one of the most frenetic, energetic, and adrenaline-pumping scores I’ve ever heard. Two tracks in particular, “Blood Bag” and “Brothers in Arms” stand out as perfect enhancements to the sound effects and visuals that accompany them. The use of drums gives the whole chase a beat to follow, and the guitar, like the drums, comes from an actual element of the film: the war party is equipped with its own live soundtrack! The Doof Warrior, as he’s called, hangs out (literally) in front of a wall of speakers on a truck playing an electric guitar that shoots flames and powers the vehicle, and he’s blind. It doesn’t get more metal than that. Why is he there? The better question is, why wouldn’t he be there? All these details add to the world building and are part of what makes the movie one of a kind.

Mad Max: Fury Road is indeed full of sound and fury, and it signifies this: an Australian director in his 70’s brought together the right team for the right project at the right time to produce a film that completely blew everyone away and continues to thrill action movie lovers like no other action movie has in all the years since. It is a film that employs the best kind of special effects techniques to create a singular vision so strong it does not feel like any of those soulless reboots I referred to earlier. Mad Max: Fury Road is timeless, and it is one of very, very few favourite films of mine produced in the 2010s.